


Dear Yoo

by daesperado



Category: B.A.P
Genre: Other, i have no idea how these additional tags work so meh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 14:42:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2273592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daesperado/pseuds/daesperado
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The process starts very, very slowly. And once it starts, it cannot stop. <br/>It's like a whirlwind of emotions, really. Your heart clenches, your voice stops working. And after a while, you just don't care anymore.</p><p>It's like the pressure in a balloon. </p><p>The balloon is limp and free of air, it can be stretched and stretched and stretched some more as air is pumped in. It loses its elasticity, the surface becomes taut and firm.</p><p>Apply a little more pressure from the outside and it bursts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dear Yoo

**Author's Note:**

> So this inspiration(?) came at a whim and honestly I write all my stories on whim.   
> I've learnt that chaptered fics dont work for me bc I can't finish what I started lol
> 
> Anyways I hope you guys will like it? hahhaah /nervous laughs

It's a slow process and this process practically started since I was a little boy.

 

I'd like to see everyone in this world as a deflated balloon. They all live their lives everyday, doing things within their comfort zones. Meeting a friend, meeting a partner, making new friends and going to school. Graduating from school and then going into the workforce. It's a process. Everything is a process that builds very slowly as one's path is shaped by the different decisions and choices that they make.

People chose who they wanted to be, who they wanted to be _with_  and just basically did what they wanted to. That's life, right?

For me though, I think my life chose me instead.

I was born into a fairly normal family, my dad was the manager of a firm and my mom was a stay-home wife. She wanted to take care of me and watch me grow and just basically be there for me. I'm really blessed because she was there. She was always there for me whenever no one else was. She knew about the name calling, the teasing and the occasional pranks that people pulled on me at school. Don't get me wrong, I look every bit as normal as a person can be. I don't have weird facial features, I don't have a weird voice. I was just me, plain old Yoo Youngjae.

She always told me, "It's okay honey, just bear with it. If you don't respond, they'll get bored and leave you alone eventually."

So I did.

I took every single insult in my stride. I never let it affect me, never let it get to my head because I was me, plain old me who was trying to find a place in the world. 

 

My grades were good, I suppose. I got into the second best class because I studied on weekends instead of getting wasted at parties like the rest of the people at my school. They all know I'm sort of a nerd and a closed-off person so no one ever bothered to talk to me or befriend me; though I would warmly welcome anyone who wanted to be my friend. No one did though, no one wanted to be friends with a boring nerd. Just me, plain old Yoo Youngjae who has no life outside of school, no friends to go out with, no girlfriends and no parties to go to.

In my second year of school, the verbal abuse started to become physical. Why people picked on me, I didn't know. Maybe my face was too small? Maybe because I don't talk to anyone? I'm really not a mind reader and I'm not good at picking up social cues. Maybe that's why they picked on me - because I can't pick up on social cues.

Again, it was nothing I couldn't take. Because even though I was just plain old Yoo Youngjae, I had my mother, my source of strength to keep me grounded, to keep me strong.

 

One fine day though, someone walked into my life. Or rather...someone came crashing into my life - literally, because Jung Daehyun tripped in front of me and slammed his lunch tray in my face.

"Oh my god! I'm am sooo sorry! I didn't mean to, I-"

"No no, it's fine. I can just get an extra shirt and get washed up in the restroom. These things happen to me really often, so it's fine really," I said while picking up his tray and passing it to him. It was only then that I noticed, I haven't seen him around before. And trust me, I know because I spend my time in the cafeteria just watching people and trying to guess what their lives are like just by looking at their faces. It's kind of amusing for me, and a good way to de-stress. It's weird and stalker-ish, I know but I'm just me.

He pursed his lips for a split second and took the tray from me, giving me a curious look.

"These things happen often? Are you clumsy too?" he asked with a spark of amusement in his voice.

Another thing about this guy, he had an accent. So I could only guess that he wasn't local so he might be a transfer student or someone on an exchange program to our school.

There was a brief moment of silence between us before I realized I hadn't answered his question. He was starting to look awkward and shuffled on his feet, his hands fiddling with the now empty tray.

I cleared my throat and looked elsewhere, "Yea... I sort of get into accidents quite often."

_Like someone 'accidentally' spilling paint on my new shirt, or someone 'accidentally' pushing me into the mud. Or someone 'accidentally' tearing my favorite book._

"Ahhh," he nodded and laughed, his voice sounded airy and carefree as he did so, his eyes crinkled into the cutest little crescents and he had the cutest dimples on his cheeks, "So we are already alike! My mum used to tell me I had my feet for my hands and my hands for my feet."

I squinted my eyes at him weirdly and he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, "I-it's a country saying. It basically means that I'm clumsy."

We both shared a laugh and I knew that he was here to stay.

 

The following weeks were magical, to say the least. Daehyun was everything I wasn't. He was loud and outgoing, and he got along with everyone else. People always gossiped about me and my 'weird' tendencies to him (though I'd like to say, 99% of those things about me aren't true).

But he didn't abandon me. Instead, he reprimanded anyone who dared to say anything false about me. This was enough evidence for him to find out that I was the one who people picked on and that my 'accidents' aren't really accidents. 

He had my back and he always made me laugh. Well,  _he_  always laughed and that made me laugh because his laugh is contagious. My mother noticed me acting differently and she even thought I was in love. Pshh yeah right, I'm not in love with Daehyun. He was my second pillar of strength, cheesy as it sounds. He was the first person who ever cared about me besides my parents.

 

Speaking of cheesy, Daehyun had a weird thing for _cheesecake_.

He'd go on and on for minutes about the different cheeses and the different cheesecakes he likes, I always knew what to get for him for his birthday.

He wasn't materialistic. He was very simple. Very much like a little puppy who would be satisfied with just food. Whenever I tried to get a new bracelet or shoes for him, he'd give me a disapproving look even though he liked the gifts very much. 

"Oh you didn't have to. You're my first friend I made since I came here from Busan. Your friendship is enough to last me my entire life's supply of birthday gifts." he'd drawl on with his cute country accent. Yes, it's awfully cheesy, and now I know where I picked up my cheesiness from.

 

But I guess my friendship wasn't enough for him to last his entire life because somewhere along the way, he'd made new friends.

 

Friends who were cooler, more popular, and more outgoing. Very much similar to his personality. Somewhere along the way he drifted away from the friendship we'd spent so much time building up. The movies we'd watched together, the cheeky things we did together, and all the inside jokes we shared.

He started making up excuses to cancel on our plans and I saw less and less of him.

It boiled down to me only able to see him only when I accidentally bumped into him, or him accidentally bumping into me. Yes, he's still clumsy but I think that's because it's already hard-wired into him. I'd smile at him in the hallways and he'd return a stiff smile to me that's barely noticeable, unlike the huge, kitten smiles he used to shower me with every single minute of the time we spent together. It was almost as if he was ashamed to let people know that we  _knew_ each other.

But that's okay because lives change and people change.

Nothing's gonna last forever.

“Sorry Youngjae, I can’t make it for movie night today… something came up at home and I have to-“

I cut him short and gave him a forced smile, “It’s alright. I understand.”

“I’m so sorry! Things have been happening and I’m just so busy. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” He looked into my eyes earnestly and for a moment I believed him. But that was getting very hard to do because these promises were always broken. Something will happen at the last minute and he’d be unable to show up.

“It’s okay, I-“

Before I could finish my sentence though, one of his friends came by and he took off with them, only turning back to give me a slight wave.

“…I can wait for you to settle your stuff.” I whispered the last part, sighing.

Remember what I said about people being like deflated balloons? And the pressure that builds on and on until it is completely filled with air? Until the rubber is fully stretched and all it takes is a little pressure from the outside to make it burst into hundreds of tiny pieces?

 

Well my life is exactly like that balloon. Or _was_ , if we want to be exact.

 

 

Daehyun choked back his sobs as he stared at the paper he was holding with trembling hands. He was a mess of tears and snot and he was pretty sure he looked hideous but he didn’t care. People were watching and he needed to do this, for Youngjae, for himself. For their friendship.

 

 

My mum had always been there for me and she helped me cope with my dwindling friendship with Daehyun. Everything was returning back to normal, back to when I didn’t have any friends, back when Daehyun hadn’t unceremoniously changed my life.

But I guess fate was cruel, in a way. It was trying to take away my source of strength. Maybe I was too reliant on her and maybe fate or life wanted to toss me some lemons so I could make my own lemonade. But she got really sick. My mum contracted stomach cancer and apparently she had been hiding this from me and my dad.

And like those typical dramas, her cancer was already at its terminal stage.

My life seemed to be going downhill since then. Without my mum’s constant encouragement, I tried to be strong but there were so many bumps in the road. I could feel myself spinning out of control.

Everyday I would alternate between school and the hospital. She was too sick to even leave the hospital bed. I couldn’t even take her out to the garden for some fresh air because she couldn’t even sit up for more than half an hour. There was so much medication, so many shots and so much suffering on her part, and I wanted to be strong for once, to be her pillar of strength.

But every single time I saw the doctors stick a needle as thick as my little finger into her veins, I struggled to breathe. I struggled to be strong for her.

My dad was in and out of the hospital, though he couldn’t visit much because of his work. And I completely understand because he still needed to work to pay for the house, to pay for everything that we had. He had it pretty tough too, I know.

 

School hadn’t been much fun either.

I tried to get a hold of Daehyun so I could tell him my troubles but he always seemed so busy and happy with his new friends, I didn’t want to ruin it for him with my sob story and troubles.

So once again, I kept to myself and let everybody else pick on me and trample on my self esteem. I let them do whatever they wanted with me because I just wanted to leave school grounds in one piece and head to the hospital to see my mum.

There were a lot of beatings because I always had that expressionless face on. And apparently they saw that as a sort of threat and they said they ‘hated my guts’. I let them be, I let them hit me and treat me like a punching bag.

It was painful, yes. But all I could think of was to visit my mother.

 

 

The atmosphere was solemn as Daehyun sniffled and rubbed his nose angrily. How could he have been so stupid, so shallow and so insensitive? He knew Youngjae well. He should’ve seen the signs. Those signs of the balloon being filled up bit by bit with pressure, signs of him fading and breaking.

 

 

One day, as fate would have it, I unknowingly offended one of Daehyun’s friends. He had always hated me and only God knows why. Of course there was a lot of verbal insults. And after those verbal insults, the physical assault would begin. It’s kind of a predictable outcome now that I’ve grown used to all this.

But he was there. And suddenly, all the pain intensified tenfold.

Daehyun was there, watching wordlessly as they beat me up.

I felt worse than dirt. He was watching me so intently and I felt a pang of pain zip through my entire being. Weirdly enough, the pain wasn’t from the beatings itself, but from my heart. The bruising from the constant punching and kicking had dulled down to a numbing throb but the pain in my chest was so acute, so strong that I struggled to breathe.

 

Apparently I had a heart attack.

 

Everyone was panicking before I blacked out.

 

But this isn’t the end because sadly, the heart attack didn’t kill me. And God, how I wished it would’ve killed me. But it didn’t.

So I awoke a few hours later to a beeping heart monitor next to me and my dad curled up against my side, sleeping soundly. He had bags under his eyes and he looked exhausted and I felt so sorry for him. My mother was in the hospital and now here I was, in the hospital as well.

As if on cue, the doctor came into the room with a clipboard in his hand and he smiled a warm smile at me.

“How are you feeling young man? You gave us all quite a scare back there,” he said as he ticked a few stuff from his checklist.

“I’m good. My body’s a little sore but its nothing I can’t handle.”

He nodded and I asked, “So what happened? Why did I pass out like that?”

“Well you had a minor heart attack. It runs in your family so you have the genes and higher risks of heart attack. And just in case you were thinking, heart attack doesn’t only happen to old people. Many youngsters have heart attacks too. You were very lucky, young man.”

 _Yeah but maybe I don’t want to be lucky_.

I smiled at him and he checked a few more things before leaving me alone with my dad again.

I watched as he slept, his back rising and falling as he breathed slowly. He’s a strong man, completely the opposite of what I was. I wanted to be that man, I wanted to be the man who could brave through a scary storm.

I was discharged a few days after but my dad told me to take a break from school. He’d seen me with those ugly bruises and he decided that it was best if I rested a little more. I didn’t complain though, it meant that I had more time to spend with my mother.

By the end of the week, dad had gone back to work and it was just me and my mother. She was getting paler and paler by the day and her breathing was laboured, like she had run a million miles. Soon, she couldn’t find the strength to talk to me anymore and she only smiled. Even with those machines hooked to her and all the drugs she was taking, even though she was deathly pale, her smile warmed my insides and made it feel like everything would be okay.

I would hug her gently every day and take in the slight warmth that she emitted, I would comb her hair and hear her soft chuckles as I told her stories I heard from the nurses. I told her I loved her every single day and that she’s the best mother in the entire world. She _was._

She passed away three weeks later.

Shortly after her death, my dad’s death followed.

It’s amusing to me somehow because my life looks like something that could only happen in the movies. It was too sad, too tragic to happen to someone in real life but it did. It happened to me.

Now I really had no one. No friends, no family.

It was still just me, plain old Yoo Youngjae.

The taunting at school never stopped. No one knew, and no one _new_.

No one cared to know about my life, no one stopped to ask why I was looking so distraught and so pale. No one cared because I was just plain old Yoo Youngjae.

My dad had died of a stroke after he received news of my mother’s death while he was at the office. Even though we had expected it, it still came as a big shock to him.

 

I overheard Daehyun telling his friends that he didn’t care for me anymore. And that I was an old friend that he got tired of. He was happier with them anyways.

And my heart broke even more than I thought it could.

So I was just plain old Yoo Youngjae to everyone else. I had nothing else to live for, nothing else to care for. I cursed my luck because why didn’t I just die that day I had a heart attack? If I would have died, I would be with my parents now, in a happier place, _together_.

And then I realized, I could still make this happen, I could still join them.

All I needed to do was

 _Jump_.

 

The water beneath the bridge rushed quickly, like a typhoon underwater. I couldn’t even find the strength to jump. I couldn’t bring myself to. It was too terrifying.

Useless, that’s what I was. I couldn’t even take my own life.

But then I thought of what my life has led to. I’ve always tried to be the better person, I’ve always tried to ignore all the sneers and jeers. I’ve tried to ignore everything but the one person I didn’t ignore was Jung Daehyun.

He was my friend and I loved him dearly. He was like a beam of sunshine in my life. Too bad he had to go but I didn’t blame him or hate him… he was my friend, my source of strength. I could never ever, ever hate him.

 

Daehyun’s voice trembled horribly as he struggled to see through his tears. His breath caught and he exhaled, trying to read the fucking paper in his cold and clammy hands. People at the service were watching on with pained expressions as they watched Daehyun slowly come crashing down in front of their very eyes.

 

So Daehyun, I want you to know that you made me happy and you were my best and only friend. I love you and I know you feel the same way even though I’m just plain old Yoo Youngjae.

Nothing special, nothing outstanding.

I’m leaving this note in your mailbox because I want you to read this, I want everyone to know about my life, not to feel guilty for not showing me concern, but to tell them that bad things happen all the time, and not only in movies. I want everyone to be happy and live every day to their fullest, because you never know when or where life will take everything away.

With that said, I want you to live happily, and I wish you all the best because you’ll be needing it. Life may be tough sometimes but I want you to be strong. I’ll be there as your source of strength if you ever need it. I’m always with you in your heart and I hope you’ll never forget that.

Cherish your life and maybe one day we’ll meet again and we can be the best of friends again.

But until then, Jung Daehyun, goodbye.

 

With love,

Plain old Yoo Youngjae.

 

From afar, people spotted a young man with dark hair standing on the rail of the bridge, ready to jump into the murky depths of the water.

_“Young man! Don’t be foolish! Don’t jump!”_

People were rushing onto that bridge, trying to stop the man from jumping.

But before they could even reach him, he lost his footing and slipped, falling down and down and down until he disappeared under the raging water.


End file.
